Congrats, yes I should have invested heavily money 5 years ago. Now the problem is what its going to do in the next 5 years. Start investing and then another crash....this is were I am scared and lost. Why I will be doing research on how to invest.

No amount of research will tell you how to invest for the next 5 years, or what kind of market the next 5 years will bring. From history we can guess that the future will bring periods of growth and periods of decline, certainly a few crashes along the way. So, getting into the market, growth, crash, scares, fear, euphoria, you will experience it all. Better get used to it, so you can keep your head during both the panics and the manics.

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First of all, kudos to you to be planning ahead like this at the age of 34; you are way ahead of 95%+ of people your age, for even thinking of this. A couple of personal recommendations for you:

- When you think college, think PUBLIC university and not PRIVATE college. I certainly don't mean to offend anyone on this forum who attended a Private College, but the public data (no pun intended) clearly favors a better ROI on a public education, than a private education (yes, there are some exceptions to this rule, but few and far between). To me, college has become a HUGE business, and all of these schools are fighting for your dollar, to help their bottom line, not yours. I advocate your children going to college, but your wife's student debt may be indicative of the point that I'm trying to make;

- I strongly recommend looking at the 7Twelve method of retirement fund allocation (you can look up this book on Amazon, and I have no ties to the author whatsoever). In a nutshell, this system describes allocation strategies across 7 sectors, with 12 different allocation classes overall. The empirical evidence supporting this strategy is rock solid. The only issue you may have is that your retirement plan may not afford you the luxury of all of these allocation classes. I have a self-directed plan, so it works real well for me.

Keep saving, reduce your costs as much as possible, and you will come out ahead in the long run.

Based on what you've said, I don't think your off to a slow start at all compared to most others your age. Get you budget nailed down, including how much you can realistically stash away and then maintain your focus on that end goal.

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Doing things today that others won't, to do things tomorrow that others can't. Of course I'm referring to workouts, not robbing banks.

Thank you everyone for your responses and advice. The interest rate on the student loan which some of you were asking is 6.7%. And the actual amount is 58,000 not 45,000 as I previously thought. This really put a damper on my forward momentum that I had. Me and my wife had a talk and decided to focus on the loan. Some here were saying that it may not be worth paying the loan off, but focus on investing in a retirement fund. I don't know...It is 13,000 more than I thought, but that figure really took out all my motivation and excitement of focusing on retirement. I almost feel like just paying off the loan and be done with it. Then build the emergency fund back up. I just don't know. Anyway I just wanted to let you know this last bit of information that was missing from my challenges and uphill battle I have ahead. Seems like the hill just got longer and steeper.

I may get proverbially shot for this, but it could be a good idea to pay off those loans now, or at least make a very large prepayment to significantly cut down the principal. It's possible it doesn't make long term financial sense, but there is a great value to be assigned to peace of mind, by not having that debt.
Quite a few years back I took out a lump sum from my savings to pay off my mortgage. Again, maybe/maybe not it was the right financial thing to do. But the way my mind and emotions work, it was by far the right decision. You might have the same reaction being free of the student debt.

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